Together

lamplight and a distant accordion

encircle six or eight old men

as day dissolves into dusk.

they sit in wheelchairs 

in a tiny park on this late 

Autumn afternoon,

suddenly a small boy bursts

into their circle giggling, ecstatic

he’s being chased by his chums.

the boys and men bathe in an orange glow

as the fragrance of music curls around them 
like smoke from a blazing campfire, 

and somehow veils of fear, of worry

open then drop as day surrenders 
its tattered flags of time, erasing decades 
of disappearance that echo and ache,

and aliveness, that good goddess, begins 
to urge and shimmer these men deep 
in their bones, 

now shining shouting like boys embraced 
in ageless beauty, in free-play emerging 
out of fertile ground.